A recurring theme around the YouTube ecosystem is the difficulty of monetizing content. It’s no secret that online video CPMs (impression-based ad rates) have yet to catch up to those on TV. As a result anyone looking to build a meaningful business on the platform is forced to look for other revenue opportunities. For some, that may mean driving traffic elsewhere and selling premium content behind a paywall. For others, it means brand and product integrations.

The strategy got a major boost a few weeks ago, when the company was whitelisted by YouTube under the video platform’s “Merch Annotations” program. This means that Subblime-powered videos can now link out to third-party websites, including those for products promoted on screen. Previously, content creators were limited to linking out to their own sites, despite the fact that many of these sites lacked any ecommerce functionality. Now Subblime, and approximately 60 other digital companies, have gotten the green light to get their product promotion on.

The early results suggest this could be a big winner. Subblime founder and CEO Adam Winnick indicates that the company’s annotations have generated 20 to 50 percent click through rates in preliminary testing. The company currently has 40 creators on its platform, and has doubled this figure monthly for the last four months.

Surprisingly, Subblime is not using an affiliate commerce model, where the company and its video partners get paid a percentage of every product sale they generate. Rather, the company is utilizing a performance advertising model, where brands pay the company for customer acquisitions — which could mean anything from signing up for a mailing list to completing a transaction. Subblime and their content creator partners share all the revenue generated.

“We’re helping YouTube influencers move from a CPM [cost per thousand impressions] to a CPA [cost per customer acquisition] model,” Winnick says. “Better yet, we’re doing so in a way that’s highly contextual around commerce.”

Subblime’s YouTube stars each have their own page on Subblime.com which offers a list of their favorite things, Pinterest-style. Fans can follow stars on the platform, “Fav” the things that they like, and click through to purchase them from a brand or retailer.

For creators, Subblime is not just a way to generate revenue. It also serves as a fan management and engagement platform. The more “touches” an influencer can achieve with their audience, the more their influence grows. The platform also allows creators to collect demographic and contact information from their fans, as well as learn more about their tastes — all big wins in the battle to deliver content and products that will resonate.

As Subblime writes on its site, “At Subblime, we find that we often discover the coolest things through people we admire.”

Celebrities driving audience is nothing new and neither is product endorsements. But both concepts have seen their fair share of failures. Celebrity subscription commerce startup 12Society may be the most analogous to Subblime’s situation, as it failed despite having multiple celebrities from a wide range demographics all pimping their favorite products to a membership of adoring fans. The big takeaway from 12Society’s failure was that the product recommendations need to be authentic and well thought out.

As Mitch Lowe, CEO of 12Society acquirer Quarterly Co., says about his company’s similar offering, “The reason consumers sign up is not simply to get interesting items in the mail, but to feel like they are a part of something intimate and exclusive. But without a proper system…and storytelling, much of this [gets] lost between concept and execution.”

YouTube’s decision to whitelist Subblime and others for its Merch annotations suggests a recognition that creators need additional revenue streams. The company now has an opportunity to leverage one of the largest and most highly-engaged communities on the Internet to build an influencer-driven commerce platform. There are a lot of things Subblime will need to do right if it is to deliver on this goal. But there’s little doubt that the opportunity is there.

Subblime is an online community for independent content creators and digital influencers to engage more authentically with their audience. On Subblime, audiences get more replies and better answers from their favorite people.

Michael Carney is a West Coast Editor at PandoDaily, covering venture capital, financial technologies, ecommerce, on-demand services, and the future of television, among other subjects. He has spent his career exploring the world of early stage technology as an entrepreneur and early-stage investor, working in multiple countries within North and South America and Asia. He is an enthusiast of all things shiny and electronic and is inspired by those who build businesses and regularly tackle difficult problems. You can follow Michael on Twitter @mcarney.

Booker, which helps service businesses better engage with customers online, has raised $35 million in a Series C round led by Medina Capital, with participation from strategic investor First Data, Jump Capital, and Signal Peak Ventures, as well as existing investors. The New York City company now sees 3 million appointments booked monthly across 73 countries in 11 languages on its platform. [via Booker]

PCH, a company which “helps entrepreneurs turn ideas into brands and makes a variety of consumer tech products for major companies such as Apple,” has acquired Fab for a reported $15 million in cash and stock. Fab previously had a $1 billion valuation and raised $325 million. It will “continue to focus on design” at PCH. [Source: Bloomberg]

BlackBerry has unveiled several new smartphones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, including the touchscreen-focused BlackBerry Leap and a device with a “dual curve slider,” in addition to its keyboard-equipped products. [Source: New York Times]

March 3, 2015

“I hope to have a bigger presence in the tech world. I love coming up with different app ideas, and I have a few more that are coming out. Once you get started and you have this creative bug of ideas that you want to get out, I feel like I’ve partnered with the right team, and now I have the creative outlet to make that happen. I’m happy that people are into it and perceiving it well. I just want to create more apps.”

PayPal is planning to acquire Paydiant, the company behind CurrentC — retailers’ answer to Apple Pay — for a reported $280 million. No word yet on how the companies will mix, nor if Paydiant’s relationship with the industry group behind CurrentC will remain intact. [Source: Re/code]

Microsoft is in talks to acquire Prismatic, a news aggregation service that uses natural language processing to recommend content in which its users might be interested, according to a report from TechCrunch. Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook are all said to have expressed similar interest in the company. (Which is surely a sign of actual interest and not at all an attempt by someone at the company to make it seem like a hot commodity — right?) [Source: TechCrunch]

March 2, 2015

“Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users.”

Samsung has announced Samsung Pay, a competitor to the Apple Pay product included in Apple’s latest iPhones, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The feature will allow new Samsung Galaxy S6 owners who use MasterCard to pay for goods with their phones. It’s not clear when other credit card companies will be supported. [Source: The Guardian]